April, 2006

1. April calendar: 6 Projects/Education Workgroups Joint Meeting, 29-30 Anderson Valley Wildflower Show, May 2 Quarterly MCWMA Meeting
2. Your help is requested!: Photos of weeds: impacts and roadside survey identification
3. And more help is requested!: letters in support of AB2479 funding for Weed Management Areas
4. Latest additions to the website: Get Involved
5. Resource of the month: Weed Information Portals- CDFA Integrated Pest Control Branch
6. In-kind reports up to March 31, 2006 are requested.
7. Summary of in-kind contributions for February, 2006 are available.
8. Coordinator's report for February, 2006 is available.
9. Minutes of the March Planning Committee meeting is available.
10. February Workgroups Briefs and Minutes are available.
11. How to submit items for the MCWMA newsletter.

1. Our calendar for April is now available [ click here]. All MCWMA meetings are open to the public. Highlights are:
   • Thursday, April 6, 1-3PM, at JDSF Headquarters in Fort Bragg, the Projects and Education Workgroups joint meeting to select a preferred site for the demonstration project to be conducted through the NFWF grant;
   • Saturday and Sunday, April 29-30, 9AM-4PM the Anderson Valley Wildflower Show. An annual event hosted by the Anderson Valley Garden Club. This is the first time that MCWMA will have a table at this event.
   • Tuesday, May 2, 10AM-12 noon, MCWMA Quarterly Meeting. A site visit to the preferred location of the NFWF demonstration project, to be determined. Partners will vote to approve the location of the project.
   
   
2. Photos Needed:
   • Photos needed for the Roadside Survey Identification : Acacia melanoxylon (blackwood acacia), Acacia dealbata (silver wattle), Carpobrotus chilensis (iceplant, seafig), Cupressus macrocarpus (Monterey cypress), Genista monspessulana (French broom), and Tamarix sp. (saltcedar), preferably within the MCWMA with dates and locations. For an example of how these photos will be used, [ click here].
   • Weed Impact Photos needed for any invasive weed species within the MCWMA, preferably with dates and locations.
   
   
3. Letters Requested: in support of Assembly Bill 2479 which will provide much needed support to Cooperative Weed Management Areas, such as us! A sample letter is proved by Cal-IPC: click here.
   Links about AB2479
   • California Farm Bureau
   • California Invasive Plant Council
   
   
4. The latest edition to our website is a "Get Involved" page [click here], with subheadings for
   • Survey Roadside Weeds
   • Develop and Implement an Integrated Weed Management Plan for Your Own Property
   • Contribute to Weed Management on Public Lands
   The first subheading contains detailed instructions for assisting with our roadside survey. The second subheading, Develop and Implement an Integrated Weed Management Plan for Your Own Property, contains an outline of the steps of IPM. In the future, we plan to have links to resources to assist landowners with each of these steps. The third subheading has a preliminary list of volunteer opportunities within the MCWMA. If you have links or other references that you have found useful, volunteer weed events to announce or any other comments or suggestions on the website, please send them to webmaster@mcwma.org
   
   
5. Resource Review. For the last two months, I have been reviewing e-mail listservs devoted to invasive species. I will now start reviewing web portals on invasive species. These are websites that serve as a gateway to many other resources, although there may be original content on the portal as well. I'll start with one that is relatively close to home.
   
   The home page for the Integrated Pest Control Branch of the California Department of Food and Agriculture is a portal about pests, including weeds. The plant species that are most strongly emphasized by the resources on this page are the California Noxious Weeds, although you can also find some information about un-rated invasive plants through this site. Acoording to California State a Law, " 'Noxious weed' means any species of plant that is, or is liable to be, troublesome, aggressive, intrusive, detrimental, or destructive to agriculture, silviculture, or important native species, and difficult to control or eradicate, which the director, by regulation, designates to be a noxious weed. In determining whether or not a species shall be designated a noxious weed for the purposes of protecting silviculture or important native plant species, the director shall not make that designation if the designation will be detrimental to agriculture." Noxious weeds are not always invasive- some are native species that are consider "noxious" when they cause economic damage in agriculture. The most significant difference between "noxious weeds" and "invasive weeds" is there are state regulations regarding noxious weeds, but none for invasive weeds (unless they are also noxious.)
   
   A new item of interest on this website is the latest issue of Noxious Times, a publication of the California Interagency Noxious Weed Coordinating Committee or CINWCC. Another recently-updated link is the Weed Education Page where pamphlets, fact sheets and K-12 curriculum materials are catalogued.
   
   Other resources accesible from this portal include
   • Encycloweedia , which contains detailed information about California Noxious Weeds and California's Noxious Weed Laws;
   • CDFA's Botany Laboratory , providing plant identification services, noxious weed distribution information, and biological support data to the county agricultural Commissioners offices, the general public, CDFA programs and various other State and Federal agencies. Please note that Encylcoweedia has instructions for submission of botanical samples to the Botany Laboratory;
   • Noxious Weed Information Project , for weed distribution and mapping protocols;
   • Biocontrol Projects
   • and of course, Weed Management Areas .
   
   
6. In-kind contribution reports up to March 31, 2006 are requested. MCWMA partners and associates: if you have not done so already, please turn in your reports on in-kind contributions for the period of March 1 to March 31, 2006. Form are available from the website in a variety of formats [click here]. Please recall that all invasive plant-related efforts, volunteer or paid, for the Mendocino Coast Weed Management Area may be reported, and help us meet our target for matching contributions to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant. However, please note on the form if the hours were paid from federal funds or are used as matching funds for another federal grant, as we cannot use such efforts as local matching contributions for our grant.
   
   
7. Summaries of In-Kind Contributions. The in-kind contributions that you report will be used in two ways:
   1. a summary of matching contributions for the NFWF grant is contained in the monthly coordinator's report, where you may see that we have attained our required level for matching funds for the NFWF grant;
   2. on-the-ground weed management efforts are summarized in the monthly projects workgroup brief.
   
   
8. Coordinator's report for February, 2006 is available [click here]. The report contains project management information for the grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Pulling Together Initiative.
   
   
9. Now available are the minutes of the Planning Committee meeting of [March 9, 2006]. Topics of highest priority at present are implementation of the Roadside Survey and Demonstration Project.
   
   
10. February Workgroup Briefs and Minutes are available. All workgroups have completed their sections of the Strategic Plan, and are now focusing attention on the remaining tasks from the NFWF PTI project, including the Roadside Survey and the Demonstration Project.
    
    • Projects Workgroup [Brief] [Minutes]
    • Education and Outreach Workgroup [Brief]
    • Information Management Workgroup [Brief] [Minutes]
    
    
11. How to submit items for the MCWMA newsletter. The MCWMA e-mail and online newsletter will be distributed on the first of each month. Please send items for the newsletter to webmaster@mcwma.org at least 2 days in advance to allow time for editing.